Despite 50 years of independence, Australia as a junior imperialist power still treats PNG as its ‘northern flank’, writes Marcus Strom.
The Australian government is working overtime to stitch together defence treaties with Pacific neighbours. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s recent trips to Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea highlight both the fragility of Australia’s “uncomplicated friend” narrative and the hard edge of big power rivalry in our region.
The fact that Albanese came away empty handed from both trips also showed some Pacific pushback against Australia’s – and by extension Washington’s – agenda.
While draping itself in the language of friendship and solidarity with our Pacific neighbours, strip away the rhetoric and the reality is that Australia is acting as an imperial power – on behalf of Washington, but also in pursuit of its own interests.
In Port Moresby in September, Albanese was forced to leave without the signature he wanted on the Pukpuk Treaty, a proposed mutual defence pact between Australia and Papua New Guinea. A communique of intent was signed instead.
A polite explanation was given that the PNG cabinet did not reach quorum to formally endorse the agreement during the visit, which coincided with celebrations of PNG’s 50th anniversary of independence from Australia. But this excuse looked thin.
The reality seems to be that the PNG political elite is divided over signing up to an agreement that would lock it more tightly into Canberra’s orbit. Doing so is seen by some as a departure from PNG’s non-aligned approach to foreign policy where it has historically tried to be “friends to all”.
As well as requiring PNG and Australia to ‘act’ if either is attacked or threatened, the Pukpuk treaty would see a total integration of the two countries’ militaries. This would not only deliver a further avenue for recruitment to an Australian military responding to Canberra’s expanding militarism, it will also give Australia unimpeded access to a series of PNG facilities, according to a draft seen by the ABC.
For Port Moresby it provides a line to call should it feel threatened from the west as Indonesia continues its war against the people of West Papua or needs security against a repeat of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army uprising that lasted a decade from 1988.
That this all happened during celebrations for PNG’s independence from Australia was an irony not lost on many.
The failure for Albanese is also a failure for PNG Prime Minister James Marape, who – after seeing off a no-confidence motion in April – reportedly instigated the treaty. PNG has its own security concerns, more focused on Jakarta and Bougainville, than China. PNG Defence Minister Billy Joseph is already preparing to travel to Beijing for consultations and to “explain its security choices to its partners” according to the PNG Post Courier.
No doubt, China will seek to pressure PNG against ratifying the treaty, which seeks to restrict cooperation with third parties by “ensuring any activities, agreements or arrangements with third parties would not compromise the ability of either of the Parties to implement the Treaty”, according to the communique.
This episode follows the failure to finalise the Nakamal Agreement in Vanuatu, a wide-ranging package of security, development and climate funding. Taken together, the delays illustrate how Pacific governments are manoeuvring amid intensifying competition between the United States and China – with Australia acting both as Washington’s deputy sheriff and in pursuit of its own imperial interests.
Australian aid with strings attached
In contrast to the ham-fisted Colonel Blimp colonialism of Tony Abbott, Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison, Canberra with Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong in charge likes to present itself as the Pacific’s uncomplicated mate – the “partner the Pacific can count on”. But scratch the surface and the contradictions show. Even a seemingly benign promise, such as bringing a PNG team into the National Rugby League competition, is tied up with broader security objectives. Sports diplomacy doubles as strategic diplomacy.
While Foreign Minister Penny Wong told a press conference during the Pacific Islands Forum in July 2022 that Australian “support for this region does not come with strings attached”, the reality is starkly different.
In December last year, when Albanese and Marape announced the $600m decade-long deal to support a PNG team into the National Rugby League, ABC News and SBS News reported that it did come with strings attached. Namely that the “deal would be contingent on Australia remaining the security partner of choice over China” and that “Australia will also be able to pull out of the deal at any time”. No pressure, of course.
Speaking at the press conference in December that announced the rugby league deal, Prime Minister Marape went out of his way to say it wasn’t just his sports minister in attendance, but his security minister as well.
The Albanese Labor government is also reviving another ugly aspect of Australia’s Pacific policy: offshore detention. A new $400 million deal with Nauru will see hundreds of people Australia can’t legally deport dumped into a Pacific holding pen. So much for friendship. The Pacific is asked to play host not just to Australian ships and soldiers, but also to our prisons.
PNG elite has its own interests
For Canberra and Washington, the defence treaties are about excluding China from the region, finding recruits for the ADF, securing trade routes and guaranteeing access to Pacific labour and resources for Australian capitalism. Yet PNG’s political class has its own interests. The country sits astride critical flashpoints: the long-simmering West Papuan liberation struggle on its western border and the restless Bougainville autonomous region in the east, which is moving towards a referendum-mandated independence. Some in the PNG elite will seek to use the great-power rivalry to bargain for their own advantage.
The language used by Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles on ABC’s Insiders program – describing PNG as Australia’s “northern flank” – reveals the mindset in Canberra. It’s the voice of the armchair general and a signal that China looms large in official thinking. But to view PNG solely as a buffer against Beijing is to ignore the fact that Port Moresby has its own calculations.
Whether the Pukpuk Treaty is signed remains to be seen. We should watch for PNG officials and MPs making appearances during this year’s NRL finals for a sign of whether the deal will be inked in coming weeks. Rugby league, it seems, is as much a stage for diplomacy as the negotiating table.
Imperialism is not ‘policy’
What this shows is that Australian imperialism is not just a matter of ‘policy’ – it is intrinsic to Australia’s role in the global capitalist order. This is the case whether it was Whitlam turning a blind eye to Indonesia annexing East Timor, the softly-softly on the murder of the Balibo 5 Australian journalists 50 years ago, the RAMSI mission to the Solomon Islands, Gareth Evans signing the Timor Gap treaty to divide Timor’s oil and gas between Canberra and Jakarta, or Australia’s international spy agency ASIS planting bugging devices near the offices of Timor-Leste’s prime minister in 2004 during negotiations over the oil and gas in the Timor Sea.
Australian capitalism is incapable of being a consistent friend to the peoples of the Pacific. The workers’ movement here must oppose jingoism and invented ANZAC nationalism. We must seek solidarity and cooperation through our popular and democratic movements against militarism, against AUKUS, for climate justice, for a nuclear-free Pacific, against imperialism and for socialism in our region and beyond.
Clearly, Australia is not just a loyal junior partner of US imperialism. It has imperial ambitions of its own in the Pacific. And while Canberra claims friendship, the Pacific knows that every handshake comes with strings attached.